General: Perennial grass from rhizomes; stems hollow, 70-200 cm tall.
Leaves: Sheaths open, smooth or minutely rough; blades 7-15 mm wide, flat, lax; ligules 3-8 mm long, membranous, hairy, the margins jagged or usually more or less strongly torn.
Flowers: Inflorescence a large, loose panicle 15-30 cm long, the branches spreading to drooping; spikelets 1-flowered, flattened, articulating below the glumes; florets stalked; glumes (2) 3-4 mm long, slender, 1-nerved, strongly keeled, long-pointed, the upper ones slightly longer than the lower, more or less minutely rough to short-hairy on the keels and often over the back; lemmas 2-3.2 mm long, strongly compressed, short-hairy over the backs, unawned or awned (sometimes in the same panicle), when present the awns subterminal, straight, up to nearly 1 mm long; paleas nearly as long as the lemmas, keeled; rachillas bristlelike, mostly about 0.6 mm long, prolonged behind the paleas; lodicules wedge- to egg-shaped, toothed, about 0.3 mm long; ovaries smooth; anthers about 1 mm long.
Moist streamsides, meadows, clearings and forests from the lowland to montane zones; common throughout BC; circumpolar, N to AK, YT and SW NT, E to NF and S to ME, MA, PA, SC, TN, MN, SD, NM, UT, NV and CA; Eurasia.
The table below shows the species-specific information calculated from original data (BEC database) provided by the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. (Updated August, 2013)
A shade-tolerant, sub montane to subalpine, circumpolar grass (transcontinental in North America). Occurs on fresh to very moist, nitrogen-rich soils within boreal, wet temperate, and cool mesothermal climates. Tolerates fluctuating groundwater tables. Sporadic to scattered in the herbaceous understory of broad-leaved forests on water-receiving (alluvial, floodplain, seepage, and stream-edge) sites. Often inhabits disturbed micro sites on and in recent cutover areas. A nitrophytic species characteristic of Moder and Mull humus forms.
